For all Londoners to thrive, individuals and communities need the knowledge, skills and confidence to enable them to improve their own health, and play an active role in the well-being of others.
Empowering individuals and communities
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) describes empowerment as the ‘means of allowing individuals and social groups to express their needs, present their concerns and take action to meet those needs. It can be achieved by increasing people’s confidence in their own abilities and equipping them to influence the decisions that affect their lives’.
On empowering individuals and communities to improve their well-being, the Mayor is committed to working with partners to:
1 Promote effective parenting, early years development, young people’s emotional health and readiness for learning.
2 Motivate and enable Londoners to adopt healthier behaviours and engage in lifelong learning.
3 Build knowledge about health and well-being, tackling stigma and taboo in the process.
4 Promote community development approaches to improve health, and actively support the role of the third sector.
5 Build public sector capacity to engage more effectively with individuals and communities and the VCS.
The Health Inequalities Strategy will kick off new partnership actions where we have identified gaps in current policies. This includes:
- helping people to become healthier parents;
- influencing the food industry to reduce unhealthy food content;
- generating a planned communication programme to increase positive attention on health issues, starting with HIV and mental health;
- strengthening partnership work between the NHS and VCS groups and develop the London City Charter to increase citizens' involvement in health-related decisions and ensure its ambitions are delivered.
Find out more, read First Steps to DeliveryFor all Londoners to thrive, individuals and communities must have the knowledge, skills and confidence necessary to take control of their health and the factors that affect it, and play an active role in the well-being of others.We can empower people by increasing confidence in their own abilities and equipping them to influence the decisions that affect their lives.
Commitments
The commitments below underpin the actions set out in First Steps to Delivery. On empowering individuals and communities to improve their well-being, the Mayor will work with partners to:
- Promote effective parenting, early years development, young people’s emotional health and readiness for learning.
- Motivate and enable Londoners to adopt healthier behaviours and engage in lifelong learning.
- Build knowledge about health and well-being, tackling stigma and taboo in the process.
- Promote community development approaches to improve health, and actively support the role of the third sector.
- Build public sector capacity to engage more effectively with individuals and communities and the voluntary and community sector (VCS).
The Health Inequalities Strategy will initiate new partnership actions where we have identified gaps. This includes:
- helping people to become healthier parents
- influencing the food industry to reduce unhealthy food content
- generating a planned communication programme to increase positive attention on health issues, starting with HIV and mental health
- strengthening partnership work between the NHS and VCS groups and
- developing the London City Charter to increase citizens' involvement in health-related decisions and ensure its ambitions are delivered.
